shane's "fuck" before pouncing on ilya at the nashville ASG game fascinates me. there's almost a resignation to it. he barrels into that room full of spikey rage and it dissipates in the span of a full body sweep of ilya.
they haven't hooked up since the summer before. it's been six months with half a season in between where they've been pitted as rivals. shane has only seen ilya in the frame of hockey: bent over face offs, face half obscured by his helmet, a breathless blur as he slams him into the boards, a quick chirp before they're racing after the puck once more. never static. always on the move. his shape distorted. and even when shane chances a glance, it's at the edges of him, singular, neatly compartmentalised snapshots: gloves on a stick, wet curls peaking out from behind his ear and the slope of a shoulder bulked by pads.
even at the nashville press conference shane only allows himself to look out of the corner of his eye, to touch with the edge of his foot and the knob of his ankle, so that he doesn't have to look at all of him. to look at him would give him a shape he has to acknowledge; it might risk him thinking of a darkened hotel room and how it felt to get his mouth on him
it's been six months. shane has convinced himself that that time after the CCM shoot was a one off. they aren't anything, and so he tamped down all things ilya rozanov and packed him away as something he could not have and should not want. easy. he's done it with enough things already. what is one more?
but rozanov slides his room number across the boards where anyone could overhear, already in motion, and shane couldn't pin down the shape of him even if he tried.
he almost doesn't go. scott hunter is right next door. but then he's leaving his room and his feet carrying him three floors up and between closing one door and knocking on the next he's determined that he's going to put a stop to whatever this is. it's been six months and ilya rozanov is an asshole. nothing good could possibly come from them doing this again. shane holds onto that, grips it by its imperfect edges and let's it carry him to a high ground that doesn't exist. there will be no next time, he tells himself, and let's his own self-righteousness burn into anger when the door doesn't open on his schedule.
once he's behind the door of another darkened hotel room, he knows what he's going to say. he knows all the places to hide his eyes to keep ilya rozanov contained, his collarbone or that one curl that always corkscrews up towards the sky perhaps.
but then, shane looks and his anger dies.
he looks and looks and ilya is finally still. he's still and he's soft and he's smiling and fuck.
he sees him. all of him. all at once. every carefully catalogued snapshot collapsing in on the boy standing across from him until shane has the entire picture and the weight of his own wanting crumbles his fragile resolve.
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